Youthful offenders get a break

Friday

Sep 20, 2013 at 6:00 AM

Clive McFarlane

Gov. Deval Patrick signed into law Wednesday a bill that ended the state's 167-year practice of automatically treating 17-year-old defendants as adults.

The move brought Massachusetts in line with a majority of states that believe youthful offenders are best dealt with in the juvenile court system, which is more structured to deal with the multiplicity of challenges young people face.

The new law also reflects a nationwide retreat from the belligerence of the war-on-drugs-induced philosophy that the best way to fight crime and violence is to level the harshest of punishments on youthful offenders, leading some states to haul people as young as 14 into the adult court system.

Irrefutable research findings on youth brain development, a pair of Supreme Court rulings (overturning the death penalty for youths under 18, and banning life without parole for those under 18 convicted for crimes less than murder), and the persistence of youth advocates such as state Rep. Jim O'Day and Judge Carol Erskine, first justice of the Worcester County Juvenile Court, all influenced the current change.

"The research is clear. We have a better understanding of how young people operate," Mr. O'Day said, referencing studies showing that kids, both mentally and emotionally, are not adults and therefore should not be treated as such by the courts.

"This really gives us an opportunity to separate the adult criminal from the juvenile offender and really gives us the opportunity to get to the real root cause of why they ended up in the predicament in which they find themselves."

The research also shows that the longer juvenile offenders are locked away, the less likely they are to change the behaviors that got them in trouble.

Led by Judge Erskine, Worcester and Suffolk counties in 2006 began a pilot program which studied, developed and implemented alternatives to youth detention in the commonwealth. This alternative model, called the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, is now being implemented statewide.

"We began to look at whether detention and involving kids in the courts for minor issues was the right approach, and the research has shown that it is in the best interest of kids to keep them out of the courts for as long as possible," Judge Erskine said.

District Attorney Joe Early said he sees the potential good in the new law. His office, he said, has long put an emphasis on delinquency prevention and on reforming behaviors and the new law will assist him in that respect.

He noted, for example, his diversion programs allow certain defendants ages 17 to 20 to have their cases dismissed prior to arraignment if they successfully complete an assigned community service project and an online class.

But while some young people will benefit from this approach, Mr. Early said there are others who have committed crimes of violence that deserve a stronger prosecutorial hand, such as being tried in an adult court and he hopes the new law doesn't shelter them from this.

"There are some young people who don't know what they are doing, but there are some who very much understand the violence they are inflicting on families," he said.

Mr. Early's concern is valid, but the new law addresses this by keeping teenagers charged with murder in adult court, and by allowing Juvenile Court judges the discretion to level adult sentences on 17-year-olds charged with serious crimes.

Rather than under prosecution, the problem has been the court's loss of discretion in separating criminals from young people who need guidance and support. This law brings back that discretion.